Bloomberg LP has signed a lease for 150,000 square feet at 919 Third Avenue between East 55th and East 56th Streets, close to its Lexington Avenue headquarters.

The company, founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 1981, is paying rents in the mid-$50s per square foot, according to Crain’s New York Business, which reported the deal. Bloomberg LP declined to comment.
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Office leasing activity this year in the tight Midtown South market has already bested last year’s total by more than 2 million square feet, according to a new quarterly report released this morning by CBRE.

Transactions like Google’s 178,065-square-foot lease at 85 10th Avenue, Yelp’s 152,232-square-foot deal at 11 Madison Avenue and Squarespace’s 93,517-square-foot lease at 225 Varick Street have netted a year-to-date total of 5.16 million square feet for 2014 after last year’s leasing totaled only 3.06 million square feet in the market composed of six neighborhoods bounded by Chelsea and Madison Square on the north and Soho and Hudson Square on the south, the report says.
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After CBRE started the process of leasing 20 new offices for its staff and outfitting them with employee-friendly features like concierge service, flexible work stations and new artwork, the company began a series of surveys to document its employees’ before-and-after responses to the new digs, the company announced this morning.

Professionals at the 44,000-employee, 350-office real estate firm welcomed the new digs, despite the smaller footprints at many of the locations, and CBRE’s two-year push to implement a new office strategy in its offices, entitled “Workplace360,” sheds light on the changing nature of workspaces worldwide, company officials said.
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After a first half of 2014 with 15.5 million square feet of leasing activity, the Manhattan office market is maintaining a pace that could net the most new leasing since 2000, according to new data released by CBRE today.

The Downtown market in particular boomed with vacant office space blocks of 250,000 square feet or greater falling from 10 at the start of the year to five in the new report, but leases, asking rents and absorption rates increased over figures from last year in Midtown, Midtown South and Downtown.
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Veracen Partners is among a set of several new tenants to take space at Boston Properties’ 250 West 55th Street, signing a 10-year, 11,263-square-foot lease for a portion of the 16th floor at the 38-story tower.

CBRE, which represented the landlord, announced the lease concurrently with a 7,196-square-foot deal with RTW Investments & LifeSci Capital and a 4,806-square-foot Coltrane Asset Management lease. All three firms will occupy the 16th floor of the building, which features new high-end prebuilts designed by Gensler, with 10-foot ceilings and perimeter offices.
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Platinum Partners, a hedge fund with more than $1 billion in assets under management, has signed a 10-year lease for the entire 23,274-square-foot 14th floor of Boston Properties’ 250 West 55th Street, Commercial Observer has learned.

The tenant, currently headquartered at Carnegie Hall Tower, will pay rent starting in the mid-$70s per square foot, according to data from CompStak. The terms are similar to the recent deal for Modern Bank, which Commercial Observer first reported last month.
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Revlon has reportedly signed a 15-year lease for the top two floors at Brookfield Office Properties’ 1 New York Plaza in a relocation from 237 Park Avenue, joining a flight of value-seeking firms to recently head Downtown.

The 91,194-square-foot lease covers floors 49 and 50, the latter of which is a glass box-style penthouse with 15-foot ceilings, according to the New York Post, which first reported the deal earlier this week and noted that former occupant Goldman Sachs removed columns from the space to accommodate their trading floor.
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Modern Bank has inked a 13,200-square-foot lease on the 15th floor of Boston Properties’ 250 West 55th Street in a relocation from 667 Madison Avenue, sources said.

The one-million-square-foot, 38-story office tower, designed by SOM,completed last year and conceived as a contemporary take on the firm’s mid-century Lever House, has attracted a string of tenants relocating from buildings deemed impressive in their own right.

Retailer Lands’ End has signed a 10-year, 13,729-square-foot lease for the entire 27th floor at 1407 Broadway. The tenant will relocate to The Lightstone Group-owned property from 530 Seventh Avenue.

“The excellent central location as well as the tower floor’s wonderful light and window line were certainly a huge draw,” said Amanda Bokman, senior vice president of CBRE, in a prepared statement.
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CBRE has been named the exclusive leasing agent at 1407 Broadway, The Commercial Observer has learned. Peter Turchin will lead the leasing team at the Lightstone Group’s 1-million-square-foot Midtown office building.

In addition to naming a new leasing team, ownership will soon begin repositioning the property, including upgrading the building’s lobby and retail façade—all with a view toward attracting a broader tenant base.
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Boston Properties’ 250 West 55th Street is set to come online early next month with key tenants Morrison & Foerster and Kaye Scholer having already snapped up close to half of the building. CBRE, one of the lead leasing agents at the building, is already planning for tenant expansion, offering short-term (five- to seven-year) leases for a variety of prebuilt spaces on the building’s 25th floor.

Ranging from approximately 3,200 square feet to 5,700 square feet, each space is flexibly designed to cater to a range of tenants, including law and financial services. Though CBRE has yet to begin marketing the space officially, the leasing team is already in discussions with one potential financial services tenant.

Peter Turchin, executive vice president and landlord representative, spoke to the The Commercial Observer last week about the building’s 25th floor, where work is being completed, and what opportunities abound at 250 West 55th Street. “We’re just finishing up the units right now,” said Mr. Turchin. “These will be completed in the next week to two weeks and they’re going to come online the first week after Labor Day.”
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The National Futures Association, the self-regulatory organization for the U.S. derivatives industry, is relocating to One New York Plaza from 120 Broadway after signing a 10-year, 36,000-square-foot lease–the first for the property since it sustained damage during Hurricane Sandy. Asking rents were $49 per square foot.

“As a self-regulatory body, our responsibilities and headcount were increasing,” said Karen Weurtz, spokesperson for the NFA. “Our lease was terminating and we needed more space; this was the time to do it.”
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SAE Institute (f.k.a. the School of Audio Engineering)signed for a 10-year relocation and expansion that will bring it from 1293 Broadway to 27,000 square feet at 218 West 18th Street in Chelsea, The Commercial Observer has learned.

CBRE‘s Stephen Siegel, Gregg Rothkin and Peter Turchin, along with Zak Snider and Ben Fastenberg represented the landlord, Atlas Capital Group and GreenOak Real Estate. A team from Realty Insight Group and Zimmer Real Estate Services led by RIG President Neil Schoor represented the tenant.
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